CentOS crontab – Automate System Tasks

We’ll show you, how to use CentOS crontab. How to automate system tasks on CentOS 7, using Centos crontab. Crontab software utility, is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like operating systems. Cron is driven by a crontab (cron table) file, a configuration file that specifies shell commands to run periodically on a given schedule. The crontab files are stored where the lists of jobs and other instructions to the cron daemon are kept. Users can have their own individual crontab files and often there is a system-wide crontab file (usually in /etc or a subdirectory of /etc) that only system administrators can edit.

1. Connect via SSH and update the system software

2. Verify if cronie package is installed

To automate the system tasks, or better known as jobs under Linux, you can use an utility called Cron. Using Cron you can run scripts automatically within a specified period of time, create backup of your databases or other important files, monitor the services running on your server and many other things. To use the Cron utility, you need to install the cronie package on your system. It should be already installed on your server. To confirm, issue the following command:

Specific users can create cron jobs too. The cron jobs for specific users are located in /var/spool/cron/username. When you create cron jobs for specific users you do not need to specify the username in the cron job. Therefore the syntax will be like the one below:

minute hour day month day_of_week command

6. Restart the crond service

After you make the changes restart the crond service using the command below:

sudo systemctl restart crond.service

For more information you can check the man pages:

man cron

and

man crontab

If it is difficult for you to set up correct cron jobs at the beginning, you can use some cron job calculator to generate the cron job expression. There are several good cron job calculators available on the Internet.

Of course you don’t have to use CentOs crontab, if you use one of our CentOS VPS hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to help you with crontab on CentOS to Automate system tasks. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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